Marketing White Ink

[trebor8820]

Hey guys,

The company that I work for recently purchased a Canon Arizona, which comes with the capability of printing white. White that capability comes a LOT of maintenance surrounding the white, which inherently creates a lot of white waste ink. We've had the printer for about a month now and have had to replace the white ink twice (approaching the 3rd time within the next week) and have only actually printed white twice, one time during our demo. Currently this machine is costing us about $1500/month just in white ink consumption and we're not evening printing with it.

So my questions is this: What are you guys who run white doing/marketing to justify the expense of maintaining it? Are there certain products that you've found as successful selling points that use white printing? Sure, there are some options that we can print white onto black ACM, but that doesn't come around often and we'll usually just use white vinyl in that case.

Any thoughts?

 

[JBurton]

Do you do any internally illuminated prints? color/white/color supposedly gives the truest colors, lit and during the day. Maybe come up with some in house promo items that use it, run those daily, perhaps cutting down on white maintenance cycles since its getting used? Order in some black acm and start printing really detailed stuff, topographical maps/lakes (holy cow you're in AR!), stuff that would look better with a black painted finish and finer white details.
What are you guy's bread and butter? That'd help with thoughts on justifying white ink.

 

[P Wagner]

Hey guys,

The company that I work for recently purchased a Canon Arizona, which comes with the capability of printing white. White that capability comes a LOT of maintenance surrounding the white, which inherently creates a lot of white waste ink. We've had the printer for about a month now and have had to replace the white ink twice (approaching the 3rd time within the next week) and have only actually printed white twice, one time during our demo. Currently this machine is costing us about $1500/month just in white ink consumption and we're not evening printing with it.

So my questions is this: What are you guys who run white doing/marketing to justify the expense of maintaining it? Are there certain products that you've found as successful selling points that use white printing? Sure, there are some options that we can print white onto black ACM, but that doesn't come around often and we'll usually just use white vinyl in that case.

Any thoughts?

You don't market white ink. Customers don't know or care about white ink.- nor should they. What they should care about are the new applications that are enabled through the use of white ink. These include a wide range of applications that are not using opaque white medias. This might include prints to metallic substrates, colored medias, as well as clear or translucent substrates.

 

[damonCA21]

Needing to use white is a bit of a specialist area really. If its not the sort of thing your company do, or are likely to do, then remove it from the printer. There is no point wasting money on ink you aren't using. Yes, it is useful for people who have a use for it, but if not its a PITA with the maintenance and clogging if its not used regularly

 

[MelloImagingTechnologies]

My customers who bought Vanguards from me and wanted white but never use it I set up with white, explained all the maintenance needed, then switched them to flush.
Another of my customers who runs a lot of different projects came up with his own idea.
A couple of times a week he runs white under color on a lawn sign to keep the white flowing and his white doesn't need much work.
Bruce

 

[Pauly]

how on earth are you using so much white ink on maintenance.
we hardly use much on maintenance. Purge once a day. twice if it's on heavy use on white ink (sometimes i needs a clean as it picks up dust)

And as mentioned. You dont market white ink. you market the product with white ink. only a small percentage of people who are actually looking for white ink prints.

 

[unclebun]

You could make an 18x24 of the Declaration of Independence printed reverse on clear acrylic, put standoffs in the corners and ship one to all of your customer list to tell them you can make those now.

I heard that's a good marketing strategy.